


a graveyard smash

by gealbhan



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Jack-o'-lanterns, Post-Canon, Pumpkins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 20:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21259004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: “I’ve been on Earth for a while now,” Dani says, at a near yell so Aubrey can hear, “and I still don’t understand this tradition. Explain, please.”From somewhere within the field of pumpkins that stretch as far as the eye can see, Aubrey calls back, muffled by her surroundings, “It’s fun! What more do you need?”





	a graveyard smash

**Author's Note:**

> happy halloween! this was originally supposed to be for danbrey week, but i was buried in 10+ drafts (as i still tragically am, but hopefully i'll be able to finish some more fe3h stuff soon) and completely forgot to edit in time. so you get it now! also, note that i wrote this over a month ago -- read: pre-finale -- and was too attached to certain parts to change them, so it takes place in an mild au where everyone can travel freely between sylvain and earth.
> 
> title is, naturally, from "monster mash." enjoy!

“I’ve been on Earth for a while now,” Dani says, at a near yell so Aubrey can hear, “and I still don’t understand this tradition. Explain, please.”

From somewhere within the field of pumpkins that stretch as far as the eye can see, Aubrey calls back, muffled by her surroundings, “It’s fun! What more do you need?”

Dani considers that. It’s a nice enough day, for the dead of autumn—not too warm, gentle breeze flowing through and making Dani have to spit hair out of her mouth every now and then, but not too cold either despite the slate-gray sky. And sure, there’s some appeal to the many, many pumpkins.

But more than anything else, what intrigues her is Aubrey's enthusiasm. The bright grin Aubrey wears as she parades through the pumpkin patch; the sparkle in her eyes when she’d first brought this up to Dani a few days ago; the way she slows down to inspect each individual pumpkins, the furrow between her brows as she does meaning she’s weighing the merits of every single one.

The excitement is adorable and, Dani realizes, contagious. She feels herself grinning before she realizes it.

“Yeah, okay,” she decides. She takes a few awkward steps along the path to catch up with Aubrey. “So which one are you feeling so far?”

She doesn’t see Aubrey at first, even though she’s pretty sure she’d heard her around here—and then bright red hair, lower to the ground than usual, catches her eye. Dani follows it to find Aubrey sitting in the dirt with her legs folded. She’s staring at a row of pumpkins with a frown, tilting her head this way and that, and doesn’t seem to have heard.

Dani opens her mouth to ask again—usually, if Aubrey hears her but hasn’t yet processed it, she’ll say, “What?” as a reflex and then respond. Aubrey speaks up before she can: “I’m not sure yet! It’s a really good crop this year. They’re all damn good pumpkins.”

“I don’t know what the qualifications for a ‘damn good pumpkin’ are.”

“That’s okay,” says Aubrey. “I can do most of the pumpkin picking. You can help me make any final decisions though.” She looks up with a confident smile that, somehow, Dani knows will be covered in pumpkin guts before long.

“Sounds good,” says Dani, shrugging. “Are we just going to get one, or—?”

Aubrey gasps, mock-horrified, and twists her entire body toward Dani. _“__Honey,”_ she says. “Who do you take me for?” Her eyes gleam. “We’re going to get all of—no, we’re going to get all of the pumpkins we can afford.” She winces, then gets to her feet, dusting her jeans off.

Dani can also already tell this is going to be a very mud-splattered day, but she has no qualms with that. She’s used to getting her hands dirty—she always has dirt under her fingernails. Are they blunt right now as well as most of the time (or at least when she’s not in Sylph form, where they extend into claws)? Yes. Is there a little dirt under them regardless? Oh, for sure. Does she have any idea where the dirt came from? No; such is life. So there might as well be a reason for her to have dirt under her nails.

“Up and at ‘em!” says Aubrey, already charging into another area of the field.

Dani starts to follow, but mid-step, she notices a nearby section filled with the _biggest goddamn pumpkins_ she has ever seen in her entire life. Granted, she hasn’t seen many pumpkins, but each she’s looking at now is probably twice the size of her head. She has to own at least five.

“Hey, babe, come check these big fuckin’ boys out,” she yells, but it gets lost in the wind—she hears a distant _what_ that could be Aubrey but could be one of the several other patrons in this public pumpkin patch.

Dani grimaces and gives up, heading over to the big pumpkins. After performing a cursory examination—she’s not an expert in pumpkins like Aubrey seems to be—she grabs a couple, one under each arm, and continues to roam the pumpkin patch. She can’t carry any more pumpkins like this, but she does make mental note of a few areas with some pretty nice pumpkins. (To draw, if nothing else. She’s not too practiced with plants. Though she does notice her mouth watering after a while—maybe they can convince Barclay to make pumpkin pie or something with the leftovers.) On occasion, other people strike up conversations, but for the most part Dani just looks at pumpkins.

About half an hour later, she bumps back into someone in the middle of the field (also not uncommon over her wandering). She’s about to apologize before she sees she’s bumped into, of all people, Aubrey, who’s turned back to look at her with a reflexive “Sorry!” of her own. Upon realizing, they both snicker.

“How many pumpkins did you get?” asks Dani. Her arms are starting to ache from packing her own pumpkins around, but she’ll just have to stretch a ton later.

Aubrey holds up an armful of very, very tiny pumpkins. Dani can’t help a quiet _aw_.

“I didn’t exactly count? But, um, I think all of these combined would make up one of those,” says Aubrey with a snort. “It’s perfect. But we should probably get some normal ones, too.”

“Do we have enough money for that?”

“I mean—”

“Hey, we’re actually having a sale on pumpkins this week,” says a person at the edge of the field, who must be running this thing. “For every four, no matter how big or small, you get one free.”

A sign nearby confirms that. Aubrey and Dani make brief eye contact that expresses _oh no_ and _oh yes_ all at once.

And then they both hurry back into the patch.

Good thing they’d brought Mama’s truck.

*

Dani stares at the pumpkin before her. It, predictably, does not stare back, because it has no eyes with which to do so.

“Carve the pumpkin, Dani,” Aubrey urges from somewhere behind her. “Cut it up.”

Dani looks over her shoulder with a disgruntled expression. They’re in the kindly offered kitchen of the Lodge, since Barclay hadn’t needed to use it this evening, and there are hollowed-out (courtesy of, again, Barclay, though Aubrey, Dani, and Mama helped somewhat) pumpkins all over the counters. Aubrey has already decorated one and is moving onto her second, which is one of the smallest they’d found. In the meantime, Dani has been considering her pumpkins and trying to plan things out in advance.

She twirls the Sharpie in her hand. It’s not fear that’s keeping her from putting it against the skin of the pumpkin, just indecision. “Do you really want to goad me when there’s a knife right in front of me?”

“Your teeth are sharper than these knives,” retorts Aubrey, which, yes, is true. Dani doesn’t know how long it’s been since Barclay has used these carving knives, but they’re pretty dull.

Dani uncaps her pen, basking in the Sharpie smell for a moment, but hesitates to draw. “What did you do for your first one?”

“Oh! Jack Skellington’s face.” Aubrey spins around a large pumpkin set to the side—indeed, its face is carved into Jack Skellington’s smiling face. The lines are a little wonky, but the imagery and emotion are clear regardless. “I was gonna do the witches from _Hocus Pocus_ for this one—” she gestures to the pumpkin she’s working on now, a couple of incisions (which is a weird way to think of it) already in it “—and then I realized there’s no way I have the patience or energy for that level of detail, so I’m doing a kitty face instead. I guess it can be Thackery? Or Salem? Or just, like, a generic cat?” Aubrey shrugs. “I dunno, I guess cats in general are Halloween-y. And I want to do one of Dr. Harris Bonkers later.”

“That’s really cool,” says Dani, blinking and smiling. She puts the cap back on her pen so it doesn’t dry out and taps it against her chin. “Hmm. So they’re usually faces?”

“Uh, I guess so? I’ve never paid too much attention,” admits Aubrey. “Those are just the easiest ones for me to do, so. You’ll probably be able to do all kinds of cool shit.”

“Well, I’m not really used to this—” Dani gestures to the knife on the counter “—or this—” with her Sharpie, she gestures to the pumpkin “—so it’ll probably take me a bit to get up to that point.”

Okay, so maybe she _is_ a little nervous. She wants to make something good. Maybe it’s to impress Aubrey (who, while her first pumpkin has impressed Dani, doesn’t need any of that by this point), maybe it’s to impress everyone else in the Lodge, maybe it’s to impress herself—maybe it’s just that good old artistic perfectionism kicking in.

Dani narrows her eyes. To hell with it, she decides. She doesn’t need to make a masterpiece, let alone on her first try. These are for fun, and even if she’s too ashamed to show hers off, Aubrey will have plenty to spare.

“You know what,” says Dani, “I think I have an idea.”

“Awesome!” Aubrey’s head lowers as she continues carving her pumpkin. “Good luck! I’m sure it’ll look fucking great!”

Dani huffs out a laugh. “Thanks, you too!” she returns, and then she gets to drawing. Once she’s sketched out the basic structure, she replaces her Sharpie with the carving knife.

It takes a bit to figure the knife out, she won’t lie, but once she does, it’s pretty nice. She’s not interested in sculpting—that’s always been Mama’s area of expertise—but she might have to get more into it if this is how it feels. She’s pretty pleased with how her pumpkin turns out, and she turns it around to face Aubrey as soon as she’s done.

“Oh, shit, that really is fucking great! It’s you!” Aubrey beams, looking between the jack-o’-lantern’s sharp teeth and Dani’s currently more human teeth.

“It’s me!” agrees Dani. Her self-awareness is pretty low, especially with regards to her human disguise, so she’s never been good at self-portraits—but this is an abstract variety, cartoonish but still, it seems, recognizable. “Thanks, I’m pretty proud of it. Not a bad first go, right?”

Aubrey nods. “For sure.”

“So, one down and—” Dani glances over the remaining pumpkins, head swimming as her vision floods with orange “—however many of those there are to go.”

“That sale was a mistake,” says Aubrey mournfully. “Well, if you really can’t think of anything else, I can take some of the leftovers. And we can get, like, Jake and Barclay and Mama in on it too.”

“Barclay did say he was going to make a turnip jack-o’-lantern,” says Dani, considering. Though they should probably clean up the kitchen before they invite Barclay back in, she thinks with a grimace at the current state of things. “Jake and Mama might be down—definitely Jake.”

“Hell yeah,” says Aubrey. Then her eyes light up, a glow sparking within. “Oh! Hey, your pumpkin gave me an idea for another one!” She starts scrounging around for a new pumpkin, her cat pumpkin still sitting half-carved on the counter, and returns to carving as soon as she’s found one.

Dani assumes the conversation is over for now, so she turns back to her pumpkins, too. She sets the finished jack-o’-lantern aside—it’ll only be a distraction in front of her. She rolls up her sleeves and gets to work on the next one. This one, she’s intent on turning into a Pikachu face, or at least the closest thing she can get with an unfamiliar medium and no reference on hand.

“Ta-da!” she hears after a while.

When Dani turns, Aubrey is holding a carved jack-o’-lantern up with a huge beam. It’s an interesting pumpkin, to be sure. Aubrey has further carved the top to make it look like weaving flames—the face is similarly carved, too, with eyes that look like little balls of flame and a mouth that looks like a giant wall of fire.

It doesn’t take long for Dani to catch on. “Oh my _God_.” She covers her mouth, a wide grin peeking out from beneath her hands. “Aubrey! That’s so good! What the fuck!”

Aubrey laughs, delighted; Dani catches the relief in her face, too, muted but still there. “It goes with yours! It’s me!”

“Yeah!” Dani sets her knife aside, letting her work-in-progress Pikachu be for now, and walks over to check out Aubrey’s pumpkin up close. As with the Jack Skellington pumpkin, the edges are a little wonky, but this time Dani only really notices because she’s been paying too much attention to her own shitty carving. “You did such a nice job! I love it. Almost as much,” she adds, kissing the tip of Aubrey’s nose, “as I love you.”

That makes Aubrey giggle even more. It also makes her almost drop her pumpkin, but she recovers in time to clutch it against her chest. “Love you too, honey,” she says, bumping her forehead against Dani’s. Then she leans back, frowning. “You wouldn’t happen to know how many pumpkins we’ve carved out of how many total now, would you?”

“Not enough out of too many.” Dani clears her throat and steps back. She’s pretty sure neither of them kept count of how many pumpkins they had to begin with. “So let’s get back to work.”

*

“Aaand that’s the last one!” says Dani, definitively dropping her knife on the counter.

It’s well past midnight—might even be into the wee hours of the morning to the point of approaching sunrise—and they’ve had some visitors over their hours of work, but they’ve done it. Not singlehandedly, but Dani and Aubrey have carved their way through all of the many, many pumpkins they’d bought. Dani hasn’t seen natural sunlight in a while.

She sinks onto the floor with a sigh, looking around at the mess and reminding herself again to clean before they leave. “That was fun,” she calls to Aubrey, still on the other side of the room, “but I never want to do that again for, mmm, eleven months.”

Aubrey, who’d finished her last pumpkin an hour and a half ago and has been providing moral support since, grins. “Good thing this only happens once a year. Though I wish it happened more often. God, I love Halloween.”

“I don’t have any particular attachment to it,” says Dani, shrugging. “We didn’t have anything really like it in Sylvain, either. What do you like about it?”

Aubrey crosses the room to flop down beside her. She’s still wearing pumpkin-covered gloves, as opposed to the grimy pair Dani had thrown aside for her last pumpkin, but Dani is unbothered when she takes her hand. It seems to be a subconscious motion on Aubrey’s end, too.

“It’s just fun, I guess,” says Aubrey. “I don’t think I have any specific reason? I mean, like, I’m not really attached to the religious aspects, and it wasn’t a big thing for me and my family—I went trick-or-treating and all, but nothing too big. I don’t think I ever did jack-o’-lanterns until a couple of years ago.”

“Well, if it helps, you’re really good at it.”

“Thanks! You too!” Smiling, Aubrey squeezes Dani’s hand. “The history of it is pretty cool, too—not just Halloween, but, like, Samhain and stuff too. But I guess I mostly like, I dunno, how fun and mysterious it is? And it’s probably the holiday where people—especially kids—have the most fun, which is fun to see.”

“Aw,” says Dani, propping her face up on her free hand. “How many Halloweens did you dress up as a magician for?”

“Um. A _lot_. I think my dad might still have some of the pictures somewhere.”

Dani laughs and returns the squeeze to Aubrey’s hand. “That’s really cute—I’ll have to ask him to show me sometime.”

“Nooo, anything but that,” wails Aubrey, but her plea falls on gleefully ignorant ears.

“So,” says Dani, clearing her throat, “you’re just into the aesthetics?”

“I mean, mostly—everything else is interesting, but on a personal level, only the spooky witchy stuff is enough to get me actually excited about it. Also,” adds Aubrey, waving around her free hand, “who doesn’t love autumn in general? And it’s like the definitive autumn holiday. Fuck Thanksgiving.”

“Hear, hear.”

Aubrey bumps Dani’s shoulder with her own. Dani is glad she isn’t holding a knife anymore with how much it jostles her.

“Hey,” says Aubrey, “you know what else is super cool about Halloween?”

“Candy?” guesses Dani.

Aubrey pauses. “Okay, that too. But I was going to say that you can be in your Sylvan form and everyone will think it’s a really cool costume!”

“My Sylvan form,” echoes Dani. “With lots of sharp teeth.”

“There are all sorts of fake teeth out there! Mostly vampire fangs and functional dentures, to be fair, but I’m sure someone’s made a whole thing of pointy teeth for Halloween.”

“The eyes?”

“Color contacts.” Aubrey points to her own eyes.

“…And the glowing skin?”

“_Lots_ of body glitter. It’s possible, trust me.”

Dani narrows her eyes. She’s trying to hide her growing smile, but it’s getting more and more difficult. “You just want me to go all vampire-y, don’t you.”

“Hey, that’s—! Okay, guilty as charged.” Aubrey raises her free hand in self-defense. “I did have a very shameful _Twilight_ phase at one point in my life, yup, and I’m pretty sure that Rosalie was my bi awakening? But,” she adds hastily when Dani’s eyebrows raise, “you have to admit it’d be a pretty baller costume, right? And that it’d feel nice to drop the disguise for once?”

“Usually, no one’s out here around Halloween anyway, so—”

“We could open it up for trick-or-treating! Or, like, a party? Or both!” Aubrey drops Dani’s hand—a considerable loss—to stretch out to grab one of her baby pumpkins, which she holds up to her face. “I definitely want to show these off. It’s cool if you wanna keep yours in your room or something or take them back to Sylvain, but—”

“Hmm, I might take some of them back, but I’m putting them out for sure.” Dani grabs one of her own jack-o’-lanterns (a gigantic one Jake had helped with the carving of) and weighs it in her hands. It’d look cool by the door to the Lodge. Especially if it had—Dani pauses in her train of thought to ask, “We can put candles in, right? To make them glow?”

Aubrey’s eyes light up. “Fuck yeah,” she says, setting her little pumpkin aside, and then she wraps her arms around Dani in a hug that makes Dani lose her breath for more than one reason. Somehow, she manages to keep holding the pumpkin, even when Aubrey pecks her cheek. “I’m so glad you asked. I have so many candles, Dani. _So_ many. Mostly electric so we don’t, you know, burn the Lodge down, but. Yeah! Just let me know which ones you want to light up, okay?”

Dani sets the big pumpkin down and considers the rows upon rows of jack-o’-lanterns. “Actually,” she says, “I have an idea.”

*

(The first—and thus far only—Amnesty Lodge Halloween display consists of:

  * Two giant pumpkins framing the door, one with Jack Skellington’s face and the other with a cartoony seal drawn on it.

  * Various pumpkins with faces in varying amounts of detail arranged around the perimeter of the Lodge as a whole, evenly spaced and illuminated by fairy lights strung around the walls.

  * A handful of other jack-o’-lanterns lining the halls and lobby, plus some in individual rooms, decorated by the various inhabitants and associates of Amnesty Lodge. One in Dani’s has her and Aubrey’s initials carved into the center of an angular heart.

  * Several banners and posters spread all around the interior.

Though not seen by anyone who doesn’t live in the Lodge—which turns out to have quite a few visitors that night, as Mama decides to hand out candy; Dani, who spends most of the night opening the door, gets plenty of compliments on her vampire costume—there are also two pumpkins outside Dani’s room.

On one side of the door is a pumpkin bearing a face with rows of pointy teeth contorted into a grin and wide eyes that seem to glow even more than the rest of it. On the other is a pumpkin carved to appear aflame, the candle within only adding to the illusion.

These two pumpkins, everyone can agree, are in love.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! if you have time to spare, comments & kudos are always appreciated!
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/withlittlequill) | [tumblr](http://infernallegaycy.tumblr.com)


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